Israeli attacks killed at least 25 people across the besieged territory, while Germany, France and Britain urged Israel to end its blockade on aid.
Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on March 18, ending the ceasefire that had largely paused hostilities and saw the release of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,800 Palestinians from Israeli custody.
Talks on a new ceasefire have so far failed to produce any breakthroughs, and a Hamas delegation is in Cairo for renewed negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades later Wednesday issued footage it said was of an Israeli hostage alive in a Gaza tunnel.
He identified himself as 48-year-old Omri Miran.
His family in a statement decried “a moral failure for the State of Israel… We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us.”
Israel continued to pound Gaza, with rescuers saying at least 25 people had been killed since dawn, including 11 in a strike on a school-turned-shelter.
“The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, describing the attack on Yaffa school in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.
An AFP journalist reported seeing several bodies in white shrouds at Al-Shifa hospital’s morgue, where women wept over the body of a child.
“We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world,” said Khan Yunis resident Walid al-Najjar.
“We are a people who are poor, devastated — our lives are lost.”
Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”.
“We urge Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
